Slashdot Mirror
Richard Stallman Announces GNU Kind Communication Guidelines (gnu.org)
AmiMoJo writes: Richard Stallman has announced the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, an effort "to start guiding people towards kinder communication." The Guidelines differ from a Code of Conduct in that it's trying to be proactive about kindness around free software development over being rules with possible actions when breaking them.
These new GNU communication guidelines can be found at GNU.org along with Stallman's commentary. From the guidelines: A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that. The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. I hope that kind communication guidelines will provide a kinder and less strict way of leading a project's discussions to be calmer, more welcoming to all participants of good will, and more effective.
These new GNU communication guidelines can be found at GNU.org along with Stallman's commentary. From the guidelines: A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that. The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. I hope that kind communication guidelines will provide a kinder and less strict way of leading a project's discussions to be calmer, more welcoming to all participants of good will, and more effective.
. . . This ISN'T The Onion?
Most codes of conduct now are being used in the same way political correctness is: to prohibit certain types of thinking, forcing everyone to think in the ways that are left, which conveniently benefit one group attempting to take over what's left of Western Civilization.
Having a positive goal like this, and basing it on civility and not political alignment, is intelligent. It nurtures rather than censors.
Alternative Right.
2. I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a
specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't
think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there
is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. Rather, the
problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out
on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in
demographic D.
It's interesting that a bunch of ideas seem to be floating around the same time now about improving communities - that article yesterday on the monastic code of conduct for SQLLite, this ideal from GNU, and also an article I read recently on Weaponized Empathy - the kinds of behaviors you want to lock out of communities as soon as you see them to keep them healthy.
It seems like between the three ideas you could build up pretty solid community and moderation guidelines that would really make for a lasting peace and a great place to hang out on the internet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Asking people to be kind is the right answer.
Zealots and totalitarians won't be happy though.
What makes Rich-shart Stallman any more of a moral authority than the twitter team at Steakums (tm) or the good folk at Firestorne Tyres (tm)?
He is not any more or less of an expert than those people - and that's the whole point.
What he is is human, and fundamentally, deep down, all humans know how to be kind.
Ideas like these (not rules) help guide someone to remembering what it means to be kind, that other people are generally trying to be kind also and to remember that as well.
There will always be some outliers but the point is to at least try, if you don't take a first step you'll never get anywhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
RMS manages to explain the goals of people concerned about things like diversity really well. His footnote about genderless pronouns is really good too, taking it as written that a person's gender identity is their identity but also showing how what matters is respecting that, not the exact words or conforming to some arbitrary standard.
I'm always impressed by his ability to think and write clearly, getting to the heart of the matter in a concise way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I will communicate with people how I feel they deserve to be communicated with.
Indeed, please do. And those communities will be just as free to shun you for being an arsehole.
It seems that parents are no longer teaching their children how to behave in public.
Obviously this didn't start last week, because a lot of the offenders have been out of the house for a long time.
Lately it seems that it's become so prevalent that we need some (more) remedial education.
ESR's essay is instructive to people who want to participate in geek culture but don't yet know the social norms therein. It seems lately that the prerequisites for participating in any culture at all--starting with recognizing that dignity in others and in ones self are missing.
The grumpy old man in me suspects that society is crumbling and this is a doomed attempt to patch it.
The hopeful old man in me knows we have been assholes to each other for a long time and enough of us are fed up that all of are starting to hear about it.
This kind of self-discipline by communities is a messy process, but it really does seem like it's worth a try.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
eg Text and UI controls requiring young levels of eyesight and motor control because nobody making the UI is old or disabled
This is not an issue of lack of diversity of your developers, but lack of feedback from a representative group of your users.
Camera film being not very good at capturing black skin because it was calibrated by white people for white people, etc
Camera film today being bad at capturing black skin because calibrated "by white people for white people" in general? That smells like bullshit.
Do you have recently taken pictures in side-by-fashion on a modern film properly exposed and developed without touch-up work as proof of this?
Cameras and camera film are designed for capturing arbitrary images --- MANY MANY, perhaps most being pictures of inanimate objects/scenes from nature, so the ability for film to accurately take a very high depth of color across the spectrum is necessary...
Unless you have some really really oddball special film... cameras are are meant to capture a scene with high detail containing any color; not just people, let-alone people with a particular skin tone.
There is just no reason for anyone contributing to an online collaboration needs to make their gender public. The normal English pronouns for a person whose gender is unimportant or unknown work fine: "he, him, his".
Fun fact, English used to have a distinct word for male adult: "were". It survives only in werewolf and wereguild. The gender-indeterminate "man" has replaced "were", because men are unimportant. We have words to highlight when a person is important or valuable, like "king" or "woman", but there was just no need for a word for "male adult" distinct from "adult".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Maybe this is a 'Only Nixon could go to China' moment for civil behavior.
I mean, if freaking Stallman can admit that it is time to be civil, then maybe everybody can make the same assessment
There's nothing wrong with being civil, and even Linus in his most inflammatory periods would agree (even if he's violating them). The CC and CoC-enforcement community wants far more than a minimal definition of "civil", and that's the rub.
RMS's statement seems quite reasonable, because it basically boils down to:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
That's a much better foundation for a conduct agreement than the course listing at your local humanities department.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
White people have nothing to be ashamed about
Yeah, that's not the issue.
But it becomes an issue because you can't even say it. For example there are various pride organizations for every ethnicity, sans white. Why can't we have a white scholarship? It's an obvious double standard and it undermines anyone who is calling for equality. The failure to perceive this obvious double standard is why I feel like most left leaning types lack logic. If you're interested in fairness of outcomes tie it to the well established metric of income, not the dubious metric of race. To tie affirmative action to race is to promote racism and says that Obama's two daughters need help while some poor white kids from the Appalachian mountains don't. Tying affirmative action to economics is actually trying to achieve something closer to fairness instead of trying to balance the racial scales regardless of fairness.
...They were designed to remind the people demanding equal rights that they were not equal...
Much like how colleges, and the left, demean the hated white male at every chance while promoting others.
Do Chinese Americans still face a lot of problems stemming from history? You know, given that Chinese were effectively slave labor in the late 1800s, or that most Americans were blatantly racist against Chinese people for the better part of two centuries? Actually no, they don't. That's because victim culture isn't part of their ethos. If you go back far enough we are all "descendants of slaves", or something equally as bad in one form or another. The Irish came to America to escape starvation and were then exploited. It was not uncommon for (white) women and children were effectively worked to death in textile mills in the 1800s and early 1900s. How are their descendants doing today? Do they blame all their problems on things "stemming from history"?
Slavery is over. It has been over for over 150 years. It was a terrible time in history, but guess what.. there are lots of them. Communism tortured, killed, and dehumanized millions of more people and is celebrated by the same people who support affirmative action and repatriations for slavery. How about, instead of blaming our current problems on long-dead generations past, maybe people of all races and backgrounds should be held accountable for their actions in the present?
But it becomes an issue because you can't even say it. For example there are various pride organizations for every ethnicity, sans white. Why can't we have a white scholarship?
Here's the thing: there IS scholarship of German-Americans, and Irish-Americans, and Italian-Americans, and various other Americans of European descent, and that is a perfectly legitimate and worthwhile endeavor. If there's some particular European culture you come from, go for it, have some pride, put on your lederhosen or clogs or kilt and celebrate the grand traditions of your forebears. Nobody will give you a hard time about it.
If, however, you aren't trying to celebrate any of those cultures in particular, you are going to have a hard time, because of these issues: If you want to celebrate white pride, what, in precise terms, are you trying to celebrate? Who gets to be in your white pride march? Is the criteria the color of your skin? Is it that you come from Europe? Or specific parts of Europe? How about Mexicans, whose ancestors come from Europe as well? Many Jews are light-skinned and had ancestors in Europe - do they get to be a part of it? Who is it, exactly, that is included as "white"? And, more importantly, who is it that is excluded?